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James J. Kilroy was from Massachusetts. He was a shipyard
inspector at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA. Kilroy was
a checker or inspector at the ship yard and it was his job to go around
and count the number of holes a riveter had filled. At this time the
riveters were on piece work and got paid so much for each rivet. Due to
issues of some dishonest riveters getting paid twice for the work they
had performed, Kilroy started marking each counted area with "Kilroy Was
Here" so the off shift inspectors did not count the same rivets.
In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program,
"Speak to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real
Kilroy Was Here. James J. Kilroy of Halifax, MA was the winner.
Another Story
The Legend of Kilroy was started inadvertently by a shipyard inspector during WWII named James J. Kilroy , who used the logo to indicate his inspection of riveting in the newly constructed troop ships was complete.
To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery ... all they knew for sure was that he had "been there first". As a joke, they began placing the graffiti wherever they (the US forces) landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the US super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable: it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, and the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De
Triumphe, and scrawled in the dust on the moon.
WWII Recon Units sneaked ashore on Japanese held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasion by US troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GIs there): on one occasion, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the logo, which had been placed there before the arrival of
the US scout team.
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